http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THAT TIME of year is here again when reflection is the order
of the day. Just as all matter can be broken down into four
categories -- air, fire, earth, and water -- looking back over
the past year, we can catalogue all human endeavors or
persons by awarding it or them an orchid or a stinkweed.

The Florida fiasco was the central attention-grabbing,
impact-producing, TV-monopolizing event of the year. The
birth rate will undoubtedly go down nine months after the
Florida recount since couples were up all night watching
television, waiting for court decisions, instead of doing what
the Democrats were trying to do to the rest of the country.
The situation, however produced more than its share of
orchids and stinkweeds.

Among the stinkweeds was the Democratic Party that
wanted to count all the votes, as long as they were in certain
neighborhoods that traditionally voted Democratic, as long
as they could keep changing the methods of determining the
intention of a voter, until they could come up with a method
that showed the voter intended to vote for them, and as long
as they could prevent counting the votes of absentee ballots
of service people, who usually vote Republican.

If you were a Democrat, and understood what was really
happening, then you would award a stinkweed to David
Boies, who put the Democrats into their final predicament
by not realizing that the game for them was to get as many
votes as possible counted by the December 12th deadline.
Boies should have realized that by convincing the Florida
Supreme Court to extend the protest stage of the election,
faced with a firm outside date of December 12th, the
Democrats would be forced to eat up the time allowed for
the contest stage which was to follow. If you are a
Republican, you would want to give Boies an orchid,
because he was really the architect of George W. Bush's
Florida victory by creating a scenario where the clock ran
out on the Democrats' ability to count votes.

Stinkweeds to every TV commentator, except Alan
Dershowitz (who, ironically, because of his political ranting,
is permanently in the Stinkweed Hall of Fame). Except for
Dershowitz, they didn't understand that it was Boies who
tied the Democrats to the rails, making them unable to get
away before the train ran them over.

Stinkweeds also for chads, pimples, dimples, puckers,
hanging doors, open doors, swinging doors and
butterfly ballots. Pimples belong on teenaged girls, dimples
and puckers on babies, doors on houses, and butterflies
should spend their time flying away from nets. Chad is a
country in west central Africa with no railroads, a 14 percent
literacy rate, and population in which males have a life
expectancy of 37 years. Why name one disaster after
another?

Stinkweeds to the Democratic voters who couldn't figure
out the butterfly ballots, even though they were created by a
Democrat, published in the local papers before election, and
contained clear instructions that were able to be followed
successfully in a test by 6th grade students.

Orchids also to Judges N. Sanders Sauls and Chief Judge
Wells of the Florida Supreme Court. Sauls looks and acts
like he was sent by central casting to play a wise old
Southern judge and Wells had the courage to say, finally
after one false start, that the rest of the Florida Supreme
Court should go back to law school.

Stinkweeds for Janet Reno. Reno, as odd a bird that has
ever flown into the Washington aviary, was Clinton's fourth
choice for attorney general, which should speak volumes
about her competence. Her idea of the job of attorney
general is not to be the people's lawyer, but rather to keep
her boss and his henchmen from getting indicted. She made
a simple deal: The Boss would not get indicted as long as
she could keep a job for which she was ethically and
physically incapable. Her specialty seems to be botching up
the handling of crises. She started her reign by mismanaging
the Waco situation, resulting in the needless deaths of
children. More recently, she dealt with a situation involving a
child by waiting past the time in which the matter could have
been dealt with reasonably, but firmly, by ordering a
Gestapo-style raid to send Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba.
Privately, we suspect, she wished they could have just
tossed the kid back into the sea when they found him.

Stinkweeds for Ehud Barak. The last time the leader of a
country tried to exchange land for peace was in September
1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sold
out Czechoslovakia. He came back from Munich waving a
piece of paper proclaiming, "Peace in our time." Churchill
said Chamberlain "had to choose between war and dishonor.
He chose dishonor, he shall have war." It sounds like Barak
was reading from the same script.

Stinkweeds for Rick Lazio. He wasn't a Senate candidate,
he was a chemist. He was able to take a wonderful
opportunity and turn it to garbage. He made the most
publicized invasion since D-Day when he walked into Hillary
Clinton's personal space. Stinkweeds to Darva Conger and
Paula Jones. Anybody who bought Playboy and
Penthouse, respectively, with their nude pictures should get
their money back. They both gave sex a bad name.

Orchids to Wen Ho Lee. Wen was either the smartest
criminal or the dumbest incarcerated man ever because he
stayed in jail for a considerable period of time before he was
let out, the judge apologized to him, and everybody said it
was the FBI who was guilty, not him.

Orchids to Joe Lieberman. He was the smart enough to
know he wasn't going to win and kept his job, as opposed to
Gore, who is now reading the "help wanted" section of the
paper.

Stinkweeds to the Summer Olympics. They gave a game
and nobody came.

We could go on and on and talk about the Microsoft trial
(stinkweeds) because an efficient business is being punished
and the result is that the public will end up paying more for
the same products.

Stinkweeds to Al Gore for pornography (the famous kiss
with Tipper).

Orchids to Regis Philbin's brown shirts (probably the only
shirt that influenced an election).

Stinkweeds to Bill Clinton because there will have to be an
exorcism in the Oval Office to remove the karma of a
president who was impeached, in the process of being
disbarred, was a perjurer, and used the oval office as a
hotbed motel. Clinton, however, could use some orchids,
always a favorite with New York City chorus
girls.